News Headlines:

CWG scam: BJP leader denies slush money link

14 Nov 2010, 1351 hrs IST, AGENCIES

Tables
have turned on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Commonwealth Games money
laundering scam. The Income Tax department is now probing Rs 7,200 crore cash
inflow in 26 companies linked to BJP leader Sudhanshu Mittal. However, speaking
to TIMES NOW, Mittal has strongly refuted the charge against him and has said
that his name is being maligned.

He said, "This is a malicious
campaign against me. I am just being maligned."

An inflow of over Rs
7,300 crore into 26 companies, most of them registered at two Delhi addresses,
from companies registered in Mauritius and Cyprus has caught the attention of
tax sleuths. Sensing that this could be a case of ''round-tripping'' —
money that was clandestinely salted away abroad finding its way back — the
income tax (I-T) department has approached the Mauritius and Cyprus governments
for ownership details of the investor companies.

Taxmen have
established that all the investments through the Mauritius route have come from
one address in Port Louis: 7th Floor, Happy World House. Of the 26 recipient
companies, eight are registered at A-11, First Floor, Niti Bagh, while another
seven are registered at 3rd Floor, Kanchan House, Karampura, in the capital.

Investigations have revealed that 15 of the companies listed at the
two New Delhi addresses, which received around Rs 5,200 crore, are part of IREO,
a fast-growing real estate group, which I-T officials allege is linked to BJP
leader Sudhanshu Mittal. On October 19, the I-T department had raided these 26
recipient companies, but the raids were seen as linked to Commonwealth Games
contracts. It now transpires they were conducted because of this huge funds
inflow into them.

Lalit Goyal, who is the MD of the IREO group, is
Sudhanshu Mittal's brother-in-law. At the time of the October raids, Mittal had
protested saying he was being targeted for being a member of the BJP.

When contacted by TOI, Sudhanshu Mittal denied he had any connection
with any of the companies. He alleged that a conspiracy to malign him and his
party.

Interestingly though, he dismissed all allegations against
the group even as he denied having anything to do with IREO. ''Although I carry
no brief for the company, all investments in it are transparent and have come
through private equity funds which have declared ownerships,'' he said. He
stressed that neither he nor Lalit Goyal had equity in any of the IREO
companies.

Goyal told TOI there had been no violation of FDI rules
by any of his group companies. IREO was a private equity fund with investors
based in different continents, he said.